That's fine. Let Russia escort ships that then break cables. It'll make it more obvious it's deliberate, and provide a reason for blockade and confrontation.
> There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening
One ship might be considered a reasonable pawn to sacrifice. I'd go further: require that any ships passing through the strait to be bonded at some eye-watering amount like 10x the price of the ship plus the repair costs of the cable. Make it so if the cable is cut, you make a profit.
Only works if you find someone to pay. I listened to a lengthy (German) podcast about international maritime law. To sum it up: you can’t do that much, because you won’t find the responsible person/company/state.
Russia has already carried out chemical attacks on UK soil, used radioactive poisoning in London, sabotaged rail infrastructure in Poland, and launched cyberattacks against German air traffic control.[1]
Russia supplied the Buk missile system that shot down MH17, killing 298 civilians, most of them Europeans. Putin eliminates political opponents, like Alexei Navalny, who died in custody days before a possible release.
European leaders may be passive and slow, but what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.
That behavior legitimizes aggression, emboldens Moscow, and directly undermines European security, and is making thinks really, really, sketchy right now.
> what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.
I personally think there's a more direct link between the US administration and Russia, in line with the rest of your points. I think it's more than "dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement", although what that "more" is I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure the differences between the possibilities matters in the end.
I really think it's hard not to read [about] Foundations of Geopolitics and the history of Viktor Yanukovych, the ties between the latter and Trump, and not conclude Russia's tendrils in the US, England, and elsewhere are far deeper than is generally acknowledged in the press.
I lost a lot of trust in most media to cover this issue appropriately when people in the UK started mysteriously dying and zipping themselves in body bags, and the coverage was a collective shrug. Why they would report something like that and then with a straight face conclude an article with "police say there's no evidence of foul play" is beyond me. But then again how the Mueller investigation got spun as an exoneration is also beyond me as well.
I know it's often seen as dismissive or shallow to blame the media for things, but I really do place a huge proportion of the blame for our current mess, at least in the US, on news outlets and media soft-pedaling what's been happening for the last 10 years. A lot of what people trust became propaganda, and a lot of the rest of it chased that audience around for clicks.
But does it matter? 77 million Americans knowingly voted a convicted felon and court adjudicated sexual assaulter back into the presidency instead of a jail cell. From those, about 40 million were women, fully aware that a jury found him liable for sexual assault, and that multiple judges affirmed the verdict.
The majority of Americans saw criminality, sexual violence, and contempt for the law and decided that was acceptable leadership. :-))
> Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes
To be clear, strikes wouldn't be "pre-emptive", Russia is already in a war, and it's entirely allowed for any nation to join the side of Ukraine. None of the rules of war prevent helping a friendly country by joining the fight.
I don’t believe the leadership sees Russia as an existential threat in Brussels. Baltics and Poland see it differently.
A pre-emptive strike would be expensive and immediately retcon into making Putin be the good guy - he’s long said NATO is the aggressor. Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
I think the bigger risk currently that Europe faces is the low and mid level corruption where Russian agents extend their tendrils into government structures in EU.
This has already happened. Just as in the US, all of the far-right "movements" in the EU are Russian fronts.
The two biggest targets are the UK and France, because both have an independent nuclear deterrent. If those are captured by puppets, expect nuclear explosions over European capitals.
This is not hyperbole. Russian government insiders have made it absolutely, unambiguously clear that Europe must be "crushed."
As a direct quote.
The real tragedy is oligarch complicity. Oligarchs and aristocrats in the US, UK, and EU have decided they have more in common with their Russian counterparts than with the native populations of their respective countries.
> Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
How do you propose to estimate how much it is worth doing it?
IMO, it is best is to make the kremlin government collapse by all mean necessary. Including sabotage, assassination, propaganda, confiscation, corruption/trahison. And preemptive strike if needs to be.
No, pre-emptively starting another war is not a good idea. But yes, the West should work hard to make sure their enemy loses the war it has already started.
It's not about "hating the western way of life" or any such silliness. They can hate whatever they want within their internationally recognized borders.
War is best prevented by robust deterrents. When it comes to belligerent fascist regimes who want to see how far you can be pushed, not responding to provocations and aggression forcefully makes larger-scale war more likely in the future.
Are these ships actually owned by the Russian state? I thought it was more Russia paying private operators to do some sabotage alongside legitimate business. In which case, ships being seized would absolutely be a huge deterrent to whoever owns or insures the ships.
But yes, imprisoning the crew (especially the captain) is also a good idea.
Russia commits acts of aggression against NATO states that straddle the line of ambiguity where a bad faith actor could call it accidental or at least unauthorized.
This makes invoking article 5 likewise somewhat difficult because it allowed other NATO members pressure the border states into "not overreacting". The point is to slowly escalate into outright hostility without ever having "the event" that makes it obvious article 5 must be invoked.
and the goal for this toeing the line is to spark discussion and disagreement between member states. Article 5 credibility is already at it's lowest point after Vance's speech and the new US security strategy, now isn't just the matter of sowing further disagreement.
Also a provocation that forces a reaction that is difficult to modulate. Activating Article 5 demonstrates NATO solidarity and that it means business, but it would be disastrous. Doing nothing demonstrates fecklessness and impotence of NATO. The reaction needs to be measured and proportionate.
But outright hostility is not necessarily the goal. Hybrid warfare is more “subtle”. Its targets are more diverse and the aim is less overt defeat and more war of attrition in a broad sense. You want to wear your enemy down.
I'm not sure what Russia had to gain from violating our (Finland) airspace with military aircraft countless of times before we joined NATO. Yet they kept doing it.
Russia is an imperialistic state that really doesn't like having neighbours that are not under its political and military control. Violating airspace, GPS jamming, cutting undersea cables is just their way of showing force, and damaging us, who they perceive as their enemies for not submitting to their rule.
I'm sure some bright spark will soon show up to say that it was actually NATO who was violating our airspace for decades
, just like they're claiming that NATO is the one cutting cables here
> Some officials from Scandinavia, the Baltic states and the European Union have pointed the finger at Russia. They say the incidents appear to be part of what experts say is the Kremlin’s hybrid war on the West.
The only blame placed in the article is targeted at Russia. And I'd quite like to see some speculation on Russia's possible motive for this, it sounds pointless and risky for their shipping on the face of it.
Probably to make sure it stays that way. Logistics by ship generally has a big advantage over logistics by land. There is a rough pattern over the last century or so of the big navel empires (UK, US, Japan) having a big military advantage. In the case of the UK and US their strategic policy has a big component that involves restricting their opponents access to resources water (eg, Germany around the world wars, China in the modern era or the way the US controls the sea-based routes out of Saudi Arabia and the land routes tend to be militarily unstable).
Preventing oil exports and increase insurance premiums for Russia's export economy, because Western sanctions clearly are unsuccessful in destroying the Russian economy.
My post history shows that I do support Russia's self defense against U.S./NATO threats. In my opinion Ukraine entering NATO is indeed an existential threat to Russia, because since (at least) the collapse of the UDSSR the U.S. and it's vassals openly communicated and pursued the goal of regime changing Russia (+ Belarus, Georgia).
That's not extreme. They destroyed a piece of expensive critical infrastructure. Prison and seizure should be the bare minimum. I just mean it's not enough to prevent it in the future.
That narrow passage is becoming a war zone. Look at a map. It's one of Russia's few outlets to the sea.
Look at the history of Russia vs. Finland and Russia vs. Estonia. This is one of the world's most hostile choke points.
Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
My bet is that it'll happen sometime between 2029-2035, after UK, France and Germany have had their general elections, where populist parties with more pro-Russian stances are likely to gain power.
> Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
Fortunately while close, the border runs along a fairly wide river with just a single bridge across, so logistically somewhat complicated to supply with heavy equipment from the Russian side. At least covertly.
But definitely a scenario that needs to be considered.
Narva is a bad spot, from there it would be a long trek South. Doing it just North of the Polish town of Suwalki would allow a pincer movement that cuts off 3 EU countries in one go from a land bridge. That's also why it is right now one of the heaviest militarized zones in Europe.
I honestly don't know much about warfare, but that seems like a pretty insane move to me.
First, it assumes the people of Belarus is willing to start a war with NATO and it's very grumpy neighbor to the south. There isn't a world in which the Suwałki gap it cut off without strikes and an invasion of Belarus. Lukashenko might want it, but given the last "election" there will likely be a 5th, 6th, and 7th column waiting for guns to be carried over the border from Poland and Ukraine.
Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that), the Baltic Sea is not. Sweden, Denmark, and Germany will shut down any ships entering and leaving the Baltic. Ukraine and Turkey cut off the Black Sea, and the Russian fleet is left in Murmansk (which is likely immediately destroyed), and Vladivostok... which as a single port as mostly useless, and can be mostly cut off in the Sea of Japan.
I just really don't see a way that Russia takes any NATO territory without the entire thing being a psyop against NATO not responding via far-right isolationists, and we're not there yet, or as an assist to help China take Taiwan, which likely means world war, and we're all fucked.
>First, it assumes the people of Belarus is willing to start a war with NATO
I think there is a more than 50% chance that Belarus is reintegrated in some form into Russia within this century. It's very clear that there is no plan for sovereignty post-Lukashenko and all of the opposition(like in Russia) has been exiled(so powerless). This is probably the 2nd biggest miss of EU foreign policy in the 21st century after Ukraine, they basically put Lukashenko in the same basket as Putin even though up until 2020 he did everything he could to maintain his sovereignty and got hit with horrible sanctions. But IMO it's too late now.
>Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that)
Russian military doctrine is kind of nebulous, but the one thing it is extremely clear on is that Kaliningrad will be defended using nuclear weapons. Exactly because it's basically not defensible using conventional means.
The fact that this area where the incident happened, Gulf of Finland, is not fully part Finnish/Estonian territorial waters, is only because of a bilateral Finnish-Estonian agreement. This was done in the 1990's purely for benevolence towards Russia.
Russia clearly hasn't acted in such way that they should enjoy these kinds of acts of benevolence. Finland and Estonia should seriously consider retreating from this agreement.
With 10 undersea cables damaged in the Baltic 2023-2025, it’s obvious a different part of the government needs to become involved. Acting for your national security doesn’t need to (shouldn’t) mean there is no trial.
Every single ship in/out of St Petersburg goes via the Gulf of Finland. All those ships will be "Russian" (have stopped in Russia). It doesn't mean they're "Russian". Owner, charterer, flag, crew can all have very different nationalities.
Which part or combination makes them "Russian", in the sense of "the Russian state asked asked the ship to harm Finnish infrastructure, and they actually did it"?
You can lazily speculate about the aggressive, warmaking nation (that illegally annexed Crimea, is currently at war with Ukraine, is regularly sending submarines, ships, drones, jets into the territories of its neighbours) all you like... but if you want to be able to prosecute them, you need to be able to show evidence of the Russian state ordering this action, and that the cable damage was actually caused by that ship. Where is your evidence?
The crew on these ships are usually all Russians, the ship is often registered in Cayman, Panama or somewhere else. These ships often sail under a third nationality, but when the ships are seized, only complaints are filed from Russian lawyers. Take from that what you will.
If you don't declare war, you don't get those emergency powers. You only get peacetime powers.
Russia loves to go right up to the line, and then cross it a little bit, just to antagonise you. But unless you're willing to be the instigator of WW3, you'll stick to peacetime powers and peacetime courts with peacetime standards of evidence
Because they're an authoritarian shithole with a strongman leader who openly murders dissenters, personally controls all branches of government, controls the military and has people arrested just for holding up blank sheets of paper. He can pretend the country is not at war when it clearly is, and suffer no consequence, because nobody can replace him or even censure him without the country completely collapsing. When he eventually dies, the ensuing power vacuum will make the entire country a basket case. It's a dead country walking.
Do you want to make your country such a nightmare country, so you can also cheat like they do?
Just like Trump's tariff bs, I'm starting to think that for Putin's M.O. that we should be fighting fire with fire.
Why not send a couple ships to drag anchors across Russia's cables? "Oh we are but innocent fishermen" is still valid going the other way.
Then when Russia inevitably seizes and imprisons the crew, the international community can do the same for every Russian controlled ship with the bare minimum of suspicion.
Would be a pretty sucky mission though, so many risks of capture. But the Russian government does it because they don't care about their people and also the rest of the world is too toothless to do anything about it (until this occurrence at least, go Finland - but then they know Russia's tactics very well).
Russia has been doing a "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" to the world for too long, abusing the "nice" way we desperately try to see things, pretending even when it's obvious. Like they'll do something egregious and then when the West calls them out, suddenly their political mouthpieces are all "we can't believe that the West is making this shocking and provocative accusation which is of course completely false, EU are bullies!" and then the world responds by taking a step back, pretty much every single time.
[...] two of their submarine cables – one between Sweden and Estonia and one between Estonia and Finland – have been damaged. The first cable was damaged on December 30th and the second on December 31st.
(Arelion is AS1299/formerly known as Telia Carrier. The name change happened because it's now owned by a Swedish government-managed infrastructure-focused pension fund.)
Yeah sure, we keep cutting our own telecoms cables multiple times per year, using Russian-operated ships as a front.
The Eagle S (I think it was?) case was brought to court here in Finland and they even admitted to dragging heir anchor but steadfastly maintained that it was due to their own incompetence (which the judge unfortunately believed.)
The US is blowing up Venezuelan boats, and according to Seymour Hersh, blew up Nord Stream. Why would a few cables be beyond US/NATO capabilities if it drums up popular support for US extra-judicial interdiction of other countries' maritime activity?
Do you understand that this has been going on for much longer than the US's Venezuelan murder spree, and longer than Trump has been president (this time around)?
Also, as I said, we have a crew of a Russian-operated ship on the record admitting to cutting a cable by dragging their anchor, and all the previous cases have also been traced to other Russian-operated ships (well, I think one was Chinese though) using AIS and radar data, and this has been done by OSINT folks in addition to the local authorities here around the Baltic. Are all of these people being controlled by NATO and the US?
Pro-Russian people like you assume that other countries will always just let the US or "NATO" do whatever they want and have absolutely zero autonomy at all, and you're absolute experts at ignoring everything that doesn't fit your insanely simplistic narrative that's predicated on the idea that Russia is just a perpetual victim and a spooky spooky NATO CIA USA cabal is actually doing everything bad that the Russians get up to.
The court threw out the previous case since there was no proof of sabotage. I understood the court ruled that they have no jurisdiction over accident cases under international law.
As far as I understand, it is totally different case if they find any proof of intent.
I don't understand how we arrived at letting "random nation crew drags their anchor making the boat extremely slow and loud and breaks $100M+ critical infrastructure" get off scot free including their boat but it clearly can't continue to go on. If not a court then government must step in, nothing less is acceptable to any voting person.
Sinking the ships and then denying knowing anything about it would probably be the best course of action. That's what Russians would do, if the roles were reversed.
Unfortunately too many Western leaders still think that it's possible to negotiate in good faith with Russians. In reality they respect only force, and see European rules based order and "fair play" as weakness. If Baltic states didn't belong to NATO and Finland didn't have such a big army, Russians would be already doing a lot worse things than cutting cables.
Over here in Finland, even during the "good" years between collapse of the Soviet Union and invasion of Crimea, Russian businessmen kept buying property that made absolutely no economic sense, but was located next to critical infrastructure. Better relations between West and Russia were largely an illusion, especially since Putin took over.
"Sinking the ships and then denying knowing anything about it would probably be the best course of action. That's what Russians would do, if the roles were reversed."
You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
I didn't remember that case, very interesting. But yes, silently torpedoing a Russian ship transporting military technology to another hostile rogue state is exactly what NATO should be doing.
Did I miss NATO declaring war on Russia and N. Korea? Or are we OK with the Chinese silently torpedoing the next batch of military equipment to Taiwan (a rouge province under intl law)?
Your argument, taken to its limit, is might makes right. Which, fine; but we're just not that strong anymore. Certainly not the EUpeeans.
As long as the EUpeans don't drag me, my loved ones, or my taxes into a war with Russia I couldn't care less if any this is declared or not nor do I care if they torpedo Russian ships.
However, I also couldn't care less if the Russians Oreshniks Liverpool or Marseille.
It honestly starts to sound like they just botched the design and placement of these cables - placing them in shallow and exposed passages, with no proper defense against dragged anchors.
Real shades of "that cable shouldn't have been dressed like that, in a dark and narrow channel, clearly marked on navigation charts(to mitigate exactly this scenario, from good captains at least)" energy.
The response needs to be forceful: seize and auction off the ships. There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening.
They won't be able to seize those without opening fire.
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/how-seven-students-unmasked-russi...
One ship might be considered a reasonable pawn to sacrifice. I'd go further: require that any ships passing through the strait to be bonded at some eye-watering amount like 10x the price of the ship plus the repair costs of the cable. Make it so if the cable is cut, you make a profit.
The Associated Press has documented 59 Russian hybrid operations across Europe. A systematic campaign of intimidation, sabotage, and violence: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-europe-hybrid-...
Russia supplied the Buk missile system that shot down MH17, killing 298 civilians, most of them Europeans. Putin eliminates political opponents, like Alexei Navalny, who died in custody days before a possible release.
European leaders may be passive and slow, but what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.
That behavior legitimizes aggression, emboldens Moscow, and directly undermines European security, and is making thinks really, really, sketchy right now.
Germany accuses Russia of air traffic control cyber-attack: [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrrnylzzyo
I personally think there's a more direct link between the US administration and Russia, in line with the rest of your points. I think it's more than "dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement", although what that "more" is I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure the differences between the possibilities matters in the end.
I really think it's hard not to read [about] Foundations of Geopolitics and the history of Viktor Yanukovych, the ties between the latter and Trump, and not conclude Russia's tendrils in the US, England, and elsewhere are far deeper than is generally acknowledged in the press.
I lost a lot of trust in most media to cover this issue appropriately when people in the UK started mysteriously dying and zipping themselves in body bags, and the coverage was a collective shrug. Why they would report something like that and then with a straight face conclude an article with "police say there's no evidence of foul play" is beyond me. But then again how the Mueller investigation got spun as an exoneration is also beyond me as well.
I know it's often seen as dismissive or shallow to blame the media for things, but I really do place a huge proportion of the blame for our current mess, at least in the US, on news outlets and media soft-pedaling what's been happening for the last 10 years. A lot of what people trust became propaganda, and a lot of the rest of it chased that audience around for clicks.
But does it matter? 77 million Americans knowingly voted a convicted felon and court adjudicated sexual assaulter back into the presidency instead of a jail cell. From those, about 40 million were women, fully aware that a jury found him liable for sexual assault, and that multiple judges affirmed the verdict.
The majority of Americans saw criminality, sexual violence, and contempt for the law and decided that was acceptable leadership. :-))
"Kushner Companies and Russian individuals exchanged suspicious money transfers at the height of the 2016 race, ex-Deutsche Bank employee says" - https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-russia-2016-mo...
Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes on this big bad country that hates the western way of life ?
To be clear, strikes wouldn't be "pre-emptive", Russia is already in a war, and it's entirely allowed for any nation to join the side of Ukraine. None of the rules of war prevent helping a friendly country by joining the fight.
A pre-emptive strike would be expensive and immediately retcon into making Putin be the good guy - he’s long said NATO is the aggressor. Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
I think the bigger risk currently that Europe faces is the low and mid level corruption where Russian agents extend their tendrils into government structures in EU.
The two biggest targets are the UK and France, because both have an independent nuclear deterrent. If those are captured by puppets, expect nuclear explosions over European capitals.
This is not hyperbole. Russian government insiders have made it absolutely, unambiguously clear that Europe must be "crushed."
As a direct quote.
The real tragedy is oligarch complicity. Oligarchs and aristocrats in the US, UK, and EU have decided they have more in common with their Russian counterparts than with the native populations of their respective countries.
Come on. Who cares what he pretend?
> Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
How do you propose to estimate how much it is worth doing it?
IMO, it is best is to make the kremlin government collapse by all mean necessary. Including sabotage, assassination, propaganda, confiscation, corruption/trahison. And preemptive strike if needs to be.
Good luck with that, though.
Depending on the days, the priority changes, between Russia or attacking the US first, maybe with the help from Canada :-))
You have to deal with one threat at a time, and it seems the fight against chlorinated chicken will take priority for now... :-)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands...
War is best prevented by robust deterrents. When it comes to belligerent fascist regimes who want to see how far you can be pushed, not responding to provocations and aggression forcefully makes larger-scale war more likely in the future.
But yes, imprisoning the crew (especially the captain) is also a good idea.
Many international ships are crewed by what is essentially slave labor. Too many google links to share them all, but try this to start: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/thats-slavery-seafarers-s...
This makes invoking article 5 likewise somewhat difficult because it allowed other NATO members pressure the border states into "not overreacting". The point is to slowly escalate into outright hostility without ever having "the event" that makes it obvious article 5 must be invoked.
But outright hostility is not necessarily the goal. Hybrid warfare is more “subtle”. Its targets are more diverse and the aim is less overt defeat and more war of attrition in a broad sense. You want to wear your enemy down.
Russia is an imperialistic state that really doesn't like having neighbours that are not under its political and military control. Violating airspace, GPS jamming, cutting undersea cables is just their way of showing force, and damaging us, who they perceive as their enemies for not submitting to their rule.
The only blame placed in the article is targeted at Russia. And I'd quite like to see some speculation on Russia's possible motive for this, it sounds pointless and risky for their shipping on the face of it.
EDIT looking at your post history its very clear you have no intention of discussing this in good faith.
My post history shows that I do support Russia's self defense against U.S./NATO threats. In my opinion Ukraine entering NATO is indeed an existential threat to Russia, because since (at least) the collapse of the UDSSR the U.S. and it's vassals openly communicated and pursued the goal of regime changing Russia (+ Belarus, Georgia).
My bet is that it'll happen sometime between 2029-2035, after UK, France and Germany have had their general elections, where populist parties with more pro-Russian stances are likely to gain power.
Fortunately while close, the border runs along a fairly wide river with just a single bridge across, so logistically somewhat complicated to supply with heavy equipment from the Russian side. At least covertly.
But definitely a scenario that needs to be considered.
Narva is much less interesting in that sense.
It would be easy to set up a Russian military presence, and it would be hard to dislodge it from a distance without considerable effort and expense.
First, it assumes the people of Belarus is willing to start a war with NATO and it's very grumpy neighbor to the south. There isn't a world in which the Suwałki gap it cut off without strikes and an invasion of Belarus. Lukashenko might want it, but given the last "election" there will likely be a 5th, 6th, and 7th column waiting for guns to be carried over the border from Poland and Ukraine.
Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that), the Baltic Sea is not. Sweden, Denmark, and Germany will shut down any ships entering and leaving the Baltic. Ukraine and Turkey cut off the Black Sea, and the Russian fleet is left in Murmansk (which is likely immediately destroyed), and Vladivostok... which as a single port as mostly useless, and can be mostly cut off in the Sea of Japan.
I just really don't see a way that Russia takes any NATO territory without the entire thing being a psyop against NATO not responding via far-right isolationists, and we're not there yet, or as an assist to help China take Taiwan, which likely means world war, and we're all fucked.
I think there is a more than 50% chance that Belarus is reintegrated in some form into Russia within this century. It's very clear that there is no plan for sovereignty post-Lukashenko and all of the opposition(like in Russia) has been exiled(so powerless). This is probably the 2nd biggest miss of EU foreign policy in the 21st century after Ukraine, they basically put Lukashenko in the same basket as Putin even though up until 2020 he did everything he could to maintain his sovereignty and got hit with horrible sanctions. But IMO it's too late now.
>Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that)
Russian military doctrine is kind of nebulous, but the one thing it is extremely clear on is that Kaliningrad will be defended using nuclear weapons. Exactly because it's basically not defensible using conventional means.
Russia clearly hasn't acted in such way that they should enjoy these kinds of acts of benevolence. Finland and Estonia should seriously consider retreating from this agreement.
Which part or combination makes them "Russian", in the sense of "the Russian state asked asked the ship to harm Finnish infrastructure, and they actually did it"?
You can lazily speculate about the aggressive, warmaking nation (that illegally annexed Crimea, is currently at war with Ukraine, is regularly sending submarines, ships, drones, jets into the territories of its neighbours) all you like... but if you want to be able to prosecute them, you need to be able to show evidence of the Russian state ordering this action, and that the cable damage was actually caused by that ship. Where is your evidence?
If you declare war without there being a bona fide casus belli, you'll be whisked out of power so fast your head will spin. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_...
If you don't declare war, you don't get those emergency powers. You only get peacetime powers.
Russia loves to go right up to the line, and then cross it a little bit, just to antagonise you. But unless you're willing to be the instigator of WW3, you'll stick to peacetime powers and peacetime courts with peacetime standards of evidence
Clearly this will need to change somewhat, if the other side wants to engage in hybrid war tactics. Nothing new, Cold War was a thing.
Do you want to make your country such a nightmare country, so you can also cheat like they do?
Works for small and medium-sized private companies. Doesn't work for major nations like Russia.
Doing as you suggest is like writing parking tickets for delivery trucks. They don't care. It's just a cost of doing business.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445484
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46443925
Why not send a couple ships to drag anchors across Russia's cables? "Oh we are but innocent fishermen" is still valid going the other way.
Then when Russia inevitably seizes and imprisons the crew, the international community can do the same for every Russian controlled ship with the bare minimum of suspicion.
Would be a pretty sucky mission though, so many risks of capture. But the Russian government does it because they don't care about their people and also the rest of the world is too toothless to do anything about it (until this occurrence at least, go Finland - but then they know Russia's tactics very well).
Russia has been doing a "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" to the world for too long, abusing the "nice" way we desperately try to see things, pretending even when it's obvious. Like they'll do something egregious and then when the West calls them out, suddenly their political mouthpieces are all "we can't believe that the West is making this shocking and provocative accusation which is of course completely false, EU are bullies!" and then the world responds by taking a step back, pretty much every single time.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/JOow58/kabelbrott-mella... (Swedish)
[...] two of their submarine cables – one between Sweden and Estonia and one between Estonia and Finland – have been damaged. The first cable was damaged on December 30th and the second on December 31st.
(Arelion is AS1299/formerly known as Telia Carrier. The name change happened because it's now owned by a Swedish government-managed infrastructure-focused pension fund.)
The Eagle S (I think it was?) case was brought to court here in Finland and they even admitted to dragging heir anchor but steadfastly maintained that it was due to their own incompetence (which the judge unfortunately believed.)
I suppose that was also a NATO ploy?
Also, as I said, we have a crew of a Russian-operated ship on the record admitting to cutting a cable by dragging their anchor, and all the previous cases have also been traced to other Russian-operated ships (well, I think one was Chinese though) using AIS and radar data, and this has been done by OSINT folks in addition to the local authorities here around the Baltic. Are all of these people being controlled by NATO and the US?
Pro-Russian people like you assume that other countries will always just let the US or "NATO" do whatever they want and have absolutely zero autonomy at all, and you're absolute experts at ignoring everything that doesn't fit your insanely simplistic narrative that's predicated on the idea that Russia is just a perpetual victim and a spooky spooky NATO CIA USA cabal is actually doing everything bad that the Russians get up to.
As far as I understand, it is totally different case if they find any proof of intent.
That would pass the right message if courts keep refusing to make things right.
Unfortunately too many Western leaders still think that it's possible to negotiate in good faith with Russians. In reality they respect only force, and see European rules based order and "fair play" as weakness. If Baltic states didn't belong to NATO and Finland didn't have such a big army, Russians would be already doing a lot worse things than cutting cables.
Over here in Finland, even during the "good" years between collapse of the Soviet Union and invasion of Crimea, Russian businessmen kept buying property that made absolutely no economic sense, but was located next to critical infrastructure. Better relations between West and Russia were largely an illusion, especially since Putin took over.
You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
Your argument, taken to its limit, is might makes right. Which, fine; but we're just not that strong anymore. Certainly not the EUpeeans.
Russia invaded Ukraine just fine without ever declaring war.
However, I also couldn't care less if the Russians Oreshniks Liverpool or Marseille.
I'm sorry I have no snark-free way to respond to this.
But how hard could it be to get a Cat 395 excavator in there? Dig a little trench and bury it.
Sounds like a weekend project to me. Has someone told the telecoms this?
Geez, how are we so much better at this than the actual engineers?